"Shorty" C&O consist at Lansing, Michigan, 1969.

Aaaahh, echoes of the E-L!<G>

Take away the mails, and you ain't got no money to run this train, pal!

HFM -

Classic, "showing the flag" of the former PERE MARQUETTE? Could have done easily with RDC Cars...

BTW. IMHO, C & O at Chicago more incidental, than anything else. True, it did provide connections for those travelers between classic C&O points in WV, OH, GREENBRIER HOTEL with Chicago West through trains. Guess there were good numbers of them, back in another age? Some just "had to be seen" at the classy Hotel at Colorado Springs!

A more sedate "shorty" consist at Steamboat Springs, 1960.....

HFM -

Because it is the way the COLORADO COMMISSION wanted it! There's at least one old film, with a traveler riding to one of the "Canyon" points. At the time, the Highway System was a tad primitive, at best. This with post WWII date, too!

Shrevport, LA, 1957............

Was over at Shreveport Thursday (time to replace the timing belt on my LS430 - actually, turns out 5 years past time, but we got away with it). Saw some KCS action, but no passenger of course. Grain hoppers, long string of gons loaded with what looked like well casing (too big to be drill stem).

Found out the nice art museum there (Norton Art Gallery) has, besides paintings and sculpture, a heck of a gun collection. Who'd have thought it? Now if only Mr. Norton had liked trains...

Plainview, Colorado, 1966.

Nuthin' like a two-car train with a dome!<G>

This little "short but classy" consist looks as though it belongs on page 4 of the 1960 LIONEL catalogue (027)!

Mr. Malone, this photo may be kept and referred-to as "Exhibit A" to prove that no matter what you do on your model railroad, there is a prototypical precedent . . .

The true story behind this photo is also stranger than fiction (as in, you can't make this stuff up):

In 1948, the C&O's Robert R. Young planned to get in on the postwar streamliner frenzy with a dazzling Washington-to-Cincinnati service to be named The Chessie. Resplendent in stainless steel with bright yellow pier panels, the all-daylight streamliner was to be pulled behind a massive and futuristic Steam Turbine locomotive (C&O was a coal-hauler, after all, and going to Diesel seemed, well, just a bit disloyal). There were also two Vista-Domes-- a mid-train Dome Sleeper, and a beautiful round-end-Dome chair-lounge Observation. These Domes were distinctive for their rather "rakish" profile-- a bit lower to the car roof than the standard Budd "short dome," but sitting astride the car rather like a tam-o-shanter cocked forward. The idea was to enhance the overall "streamlined" effect.

Three trainsets were built and delivered (including the locomotives, so I'm told!), but then the idea was abruptly dropped, and The Chessie never ran a single revenue mile. The rakish Dome Observation Cars were reassigned to Michigan, where they appeared for a while on the Pere Marquette streamliners.

The next year, 1949, the Domes were sold to the Denver & Rio Grande Western, which assigned them to its Royal Gorge between Denver and Salt Lake City via Pueblo and over Tennessee Pass. D&RGW modified them for mid-train operation, not squaring-off their boat-tail round ends, but instead adding a "back porch" of sorts around the rear-end door.

By 1966, the Royal Gorge had fallen off to the point that the Domes were removed and reassigned to this train, the Yampa Valley Mail, plying the rails between Denver and Craig via the Moffatt Tunnel. here's the kicker-- what is shown in the photo was the train's usual consist! Single PA, RPO, and Dome Observation. One of the most elegant little mail trains ever to take the field.

Regards,

Norm

P.S. Thanks to Phil ("Vista") Dohmen's terrific DOMEmain website, here are a couple of links to these unique cars. The first shows one of these Obs. cars as private car "Big Ben," restored to stainless steel glory, but showing the "back porch" to good effect. As delivered, these cars had the usual rounded end, and bright yellow pier panels.

The second is a side profile and floorplan (with the rear Lounge area devoted to more Coach seating), which clearly shows the "rakish" Dome-- so far as I know, this was unique to the six Domes built for The Chessie.